Taken for a ride

Dec. 5, 2007

The story of 14-year-old Kaitlyn Lasitter's ordeal, after she was terribly injured on Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom's Superman Tower of Power ride, is deeply affecting on a personal level. But it comes in a public policy context that also deserves attention.

A U.S. House committee this week was scheduled to take up legislation that would not only toughen the Consumer Products Safety Commission's regulation of traveling carnival rides but also give the agency new power to investigate rides at fixed theme parks, which presently are not regulated at the federal level.

As The Washington Post's Elizabeth Williamson pointed out yesterday, the CPSC is not now up to its task. It has 90 field investigators, most of whom live on the East Coast, to oversee some 15,000 products, nationwide. And those agents are, Williamson reported, "so overstretched that they frequently arrive at carnival accident scenes after rides have been dismantled."

Lobbyists for the theme parks pushed successfully in 1981 to exempt their clients from federal scrutiny. Now they're back, trying to protect the exemption they won.

A top industry spokesman claimed in 1981 that agency policing would be an "economic hardship." John Graff told Congress such oversight would "make the ride worthless" to its owners and operators.

Tell that to Kaitlyn and her parents. Or try that line on Cretia Lewis, mother of a Kentucky boy injured last July when, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader, "his lap bar popped open at a Mercer County fair." Ethan "was caught under the Sizzler's spinning metal arms and hit on the back of the head."

Since 1997, the Post reports, "Sizzlers have been involved in at least five deaths and dozens of injuries in the United States." Only after Ethan was injured did the ride's maker, Wisdom Industries, respond to suggestions from a group of 25 state inspection chiefs to make changes that would prevent "an unacceptable level of ejection risk." The firm finally recommended to Sizzler operators that seat belts be added.

In the George W. Bush era, all manner of federal regulation has been weakened, but the Consumer Products Safety Commission's shortage of personnel and authority is especially poignant for Kentuckians, because of stories like Kaitlyn's and Ethan's.

The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions objects to federal interference because "visiting an amusement park is safer than bowling, shooting pool, playing ping pong or fishing."